March 16 2024
They know without knowing that you don’t have to travel across the world to an ancient ruin or a holy well to experience something sacred. You don’t have to buy tickets to the game or flights to Paris. They know — just kneel down and touch the moss in the cracks of the sidewalk. “Dad, it’s the earth’s pillow!”
Sometimes when we’re walking I see them as my sherpas, or little monks in robes, showing me the ways.
March 9 2024
The three of us spend a lot of times on screens. I look at my phone a lot. The boys look at my phone, the tv, and the computer screen. If I were to write out an essay about that, you’d likely nod your head and relate.
It’s 6:44am. Waits just woke up and walked out to me on the couch. We sat for a minute, him on my lap, and I felt him squirm towards the computer. Last night he and Murphy made new skins (characters) in Minecraft and I know Waits is pining to play the game with his new skin. So after just minutes of being awake he’s on the computer — because I let him. Then Murphy wakes up and comes out. Same thing happens.
You know how it goes. You feel bad about it, you feel ok about it, you have seasons with boundaries and fewer screens and seasons where it all falls apart. It’s ok.
But this isn’t about that.
This is about something ancient, mystical, vulnerable.
Sometimes, after we brush our teeth and after “Murphy, go pee. No, right now. Murphy go pee. MURPHY GO PEE IN THE TOI TOI RIGHT NOW OR I SWEAR I’M GOING TO PUT YOU ON THE ROOF.” After all that we get the drum off of the wall and climb into bed together, Murph on my right and Waits on my left, all of us on our backs looking up and out into the dark. I start a beat, my story beat. BUM, bumbumbumbum BUM, bumbumbumbum BUM. I speak. “We welcome the story into the room. We say, ‘Welcome, story’ and ‘Thank you, story,’” (the boys say it with me). They are quiet. They are listening. The story comes in, having traveled for however long it’s been told, sometimes hundreds of years, sometimes thousands.
“Once upon a time. Once under a time. Once around a time. Once behind time. Once when people weren’t doing hard time. Once, there was a brother and a sister who were orphans in their village…”
At work in the shop I wear headphones and listen to myths and fairytales being told by great storytellers. The Orphan Boy and the Elk Dog. Faithful John. The Firebird and Princess Vasalisa. Iron John. The Spirit in the Bottle. The Maiden Tsar. I’ll listen to the same story 10 times in a week, allowing it to get into me, work me over. Doesn’t matter if I’m paying full attention — sometimes I can’t, but I know the story is seeping in.
Then I bring the story home. No need for notes. No need to tell the story precisely as I heard it. The boys don’t require that, neither does the story.
“The orphan girl, the sister, was beautiful and lovely and helpful in village. The orphan boy, the brother, however, was deaf in both ears, and therefore was not as helpful in the village and not wanted by the villagers.”
When I first started telling stories to them the words came out all janky and disjointed. I was nervous, aware of my monotone voice. Aware I was mixing up details. Just keep practicing. It’s all practice. You’ll get better. Let the spotlight be on the story. Let the drum create the rhythm. Allow the story to do its work as it’s done for generations. The boys need a good story, not a good storyteller.
Their breathing deepens. Not yet asleep, they are envisioning the characters and the landscapes in their imaginations. No screens to tell them what to see or where it’s going. They ask questions. They tell each other what they are hearing and seeing.
I tell them of an orphaned boy that goes off on a quest to find a spirit animal in a mystery lake in order to bring that spirit animal back to his village for good fortune in farming and hunting. The boy faces trials, fears, the unknown. He meets strange characters, obtains a magic belt, a medicine robe, and half a herd of spirit animals. The boy grows from timid to bold along his journey. He goes through an initiation, stepping from boyhood into manhood.
Deeper breaths. One of them drifts into sleep, one is on the cusp. I keep drumming, keep speaking, even a few minutes past the point where they are both asleep to let my voice and the story inform their dreams.
I crawl out of their bed, go to my room, hang the drum back on the wall, and thank God and the story. Then I sleep.
Oh yeah but first I look at my phone for 20 minutes.
February 25 2024
Murphy was inconsolable. I don’t remember what it was about. He’s 6, so it was something typical for that age, which means it’s typical for me at 40 as well, whatever it was — not getting what he was wanting, not feeling understood, tired, scared. We’re nearly the same. The universe is 13.7 billion years old, the earth is 4.5 billion years, humans are 300,000 years old — and Murphy and I have 34 years between us. He and I are a microsecond apart. To think any of us are any different from another is both true and as close to not true as you can get.
I was inconsolable as well come to think of it. Murphy expresses it with tears, stomping, crying, yelling — maybe I’d come to peace more quickly if I had the courage to do the same. But I have cowardice in me, so I shove it down, inwardly pout, play the mental victim, and slowly seethe over the course of days and weeks and lifetimes.
Standing over Murphy, his body wrenching, I feel my own anger and frustration. At him? At futility? At being a parent? I begin to heighten, matching his energy but not his way of expression. It’s all subconscious for me at this point. He’s frustrated, I’m frustrated at his frustration.
Then, in a moment, I remember that I’m powerless. Ugh. I forgot. I’m not in control. It’s so obvious when mere seconds ago I couldn’t see it. I get down with his body on the ground where he’s yelling and crying. Man do I understand. My boy my boy, I know. I want what I can’t have too. It’s the worst. I love your tears and I love your writhing and I love your flailing.
He’s just like me. He wants to be heard and understood and wanted and to have someone join him. I can’t control him, and the more I try to control him the more I set him up for a restricted and constrained life, and I do not want that for him. I want him to be free.
Let’s eat a cookie, pal. Sometimes that helps.
Ok dad.
February 9 2024
2024 HUMMINGBIRD MIGRATION UPDATE: Two rufous hummingbirds spotted in Texas & Louisiana and one ruby-throated in Texas.
January 14 2024
At the end of last month I crossed the threshold of my 4th year of sobriety. How wild is that. Here are some brief reflections on the past 1,460+ days.
+ My understanding of addiction has broadened and softened. My association with the word addiction before I got sober was limited to something like “not being able to stop drinking or drugging” and “only a small minority of people are addicts”. Now I see addiction as something like this: anything I return to repeatedly that disconnects me from what I’m feeling or experiencing. While I am no longer drinking nor do I ever think about drinking, I do see my addiction pop up when I’m feeling lonely, scared, or anxious in the forms of eating sugar, using my phone, and watching a ton of tv. Those are three of my addictions I’m aware of now, and I have no doubt there are others I go to and don’t realize it. When I feel sadness, I want to feel something other than sadness, so I’ll eat a sleeve of Oreos. It disassociates me from the sadness, but within an hour the sugar rush wears off, my awareness of the sadness returns, and the next day I have diarrhea. I call it my poo poo hangover.
+ My desire to flee from the emotions that I don’t want to feel through my addictive processes is a tremendous signpost for me, if I am willing, to allow the emotions to exist, to sit with them. It’s not bad to feel lonely or scared, just in the same way that it’s not bad to feel hungry. I can sit with those feelings and allow them to be my teachers.
+ Sober drunks are fantastic people. Being in AA has put me in rooms with people I would have no reason to be with otherwise. It’s such a unique array of people. Before I got sober I assumed AA meetings were filled with stumbling, down and out people who had a hard time getting their lives in order. That was a shortsighted assumption, and it was also true. I just didn’t know that so, so many people, and me, were stumbling, down and out people who had a hard time getting their lives in order. Some people in the rooms are tremendously wealthy, some have nothing, some are highly educated, some didn’t finish high school, and so on. Name your category of people, and they are in those rooms.
+ Listening to the stories of others in AA every week, without passing any judgment or responding to to their stories except to say, “thank you” and “glad you’re here” and “keep coming back” has been a gift, one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever received.
+ To have people listen to my stories every week, whether I feel like shit or I am feeling strong, has kept me sober. I absolutely cannot do it alone.
+ Being sober has little to do with refraining from substance use. Living a sober life to me means taking things day by day by being grateful, keeping track of where I am resentful and contemptuous, making amends with those people and places where I can, remembering that I’m so powerless (which is different than lacking agency), that I can daily turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand God and receive care from God/people/the earth/art/silence/etc. It’s about not drinking and it’s also about living as fully as I can, becoming more truly me every day, little by little.
+ I am a better father because I am sober. My boys, to their young memories, have not seen me drinking or drunk. What they have seen is a more engaged father. I’m more present, attentive, slower to rage. They have also seen a father who is an addict and they help me spot those places and give me the opportunity to let go (if I’m willing to do so). For instance, Waits came into my room the other day and told me I’d been on my phone too much. I looked up from my screen and said, “What’d you say pal?” What an annoying kid.
+ A year ago I changed my sleep schedule to go to bed when the boys do (between 8pm and 9pm), which allowed me enough rest to wake up between 4am and 5am. The morning hours before the boys wake have become sacred to me. I used to put the boys to bed, go drink til 11pm, then wake up in the morning feeling lethargic and annoyed and rushed. I still feel those things sometimes, but very rarely.
+ I miss celebrating with people with drinking. And that’s ok. It’s ok to miss parts of it. I miss bars, too.
••••••••
I’m a grateful man. I have everything I need. Some days I feel awful, most days I feel wonderful and filled with wonder. Life has not gotten any easier since I stopped drinking, but the ways I engage the tough parts and the beautiful parts have dramatically shifted. Thank you to any of you reading this who have always had me in your corner. Thank you to those of you who have abstained from drinking in solidarity with me at times when the people we were with were drinking. As a good friend of mine says, “I cannot do this alone, I need all the help I can get. I have an excellent chance of not picking up a drink today because you’re in my life, so thank you.”
December 23 2023
It’s alright to be lonely. There’s nothing to fix, nothing wrong. There is no evil to combat. No drink is needed to numb and escape.
It’s alright to have unmet desire. The ache is neither good nor bad; it merely is. Maybe it holds hands with good.
There’s nothing that needs to be filled. The canyon does not require a bridge.
Sanity is being able to be in want and simultaneously know nothing needs to be done. There we are held. There we discover we are never alone. What a gift it is to feel anything at all.
December 22 2023
Laying in bed next to me, head on my chest, my 5 year old asked me, “Dad, when am I going to die?”
“Oh my boy, my boy, my boy. You and your brother will live forever, through time and past time, under and around it. You will slay countless dragons and hike though thousands of forests. You’ll meet dwarfs and witches and giants and magicians. You, my big man, are at the beginning of forever.”
He asked me a grandiose question and I reply with the same energy. It’s not that he isn’t ready for conversations about mortality — readiness isn’t the point — what I think he’s asking in part is “Am I safe?”
He both is and is not safe, so I convey that concept through story. But if I say “You are and you are not safe,” then I’ve done the same thing as if I said, “Yes, one day you will die.”
Is it true that he’ll die? I think so, yes. Is it true for him? It’s not. For instance, even though he helped shovel soil onto our dog’s body in our backyard after Jack died, both boys often say they saw Jack running beside the car, or that Jack is now in the body of another animal.
Both boys have a sense of eternity, renewal, foreverness. To them, everything is enormous. Adults are giants. The world is endless. The universe is growing.
They are teaching me to live in that space far more than I am teaching them.
December 15 2023
There are a lot of angry men. Some are angry at women, some at culture, the news, some at their bosses, politicians, some at their spouses or kids. They might listen to Joe Rogan or Andrew Tate, a voice from that camp. Others might be quiet, removed.
Kindly I’ll say why don’t you go back to Ohio and confront your father, or go to his grave and get after him there? Boy do they ever not want to do that. They want their rage, and taking it to the father requires them to act and maybe lose something. They stare past me, into a landscape on fire, shaking their heads.
It’s not about throwing the father under the bus. He’s already been there for a thousand years.
Maybe crawl under a tire next to him. Tell him I hate you I love you thank you I’m sorry I forgive you. You don’t even have to mean it! Just dip your toe in that river. See what happens.
December 14 2023
They want to be held.
The younger one seeks it out. He comes to find me, in my chair or on my bed or at the stove. If he’s not at my side I know soon enough I’ll hear quick footsteps on the hardwood floor grow from faint to loud, then there he is.
The older waits for it. He will stay wherever he is — reading on his bed, drawing at the kitchen table, popcorn and a show on the couch, for hours. When I go and sit next to him he wraps his arms around me tight and says, “Where were you? I missed you.”
I need to keep these two moves in mind: receive and go towards. A third move: teach them to do the same. That’s the work.
December 13 2023
When teaching my sons (5yo & 8yo) about any larger concept, sex or death or betrayal or that one day they will have to leave me and their mother to become their own men — if I tell them about these things in a flat tone, or if I am direct and dry in my language, they shut down. I have seen them become guarded. This often leads to never telling them what they need to learn in bits and pieces over time. But if I walk into those concepts by beginning with the words, “Once upon a time there was a king and a queen in a castle near a great woods, and that king and queen had a son….” — my boys light up because the playing field has been leveled. It’s no longer dad talking. It’s generations. It’s our ancestors. It’s mystery. They don’t put that language to it, but they know it’s not simply me. By using story I can tell them about absolutely anything, and they are enthralled.
December 10 2023
Before any religions made their holy books, before verses and chapters and surahs and ayahs and sections and poems, there was earth — the original text. Who we are, why we are, what we are, all surrounds us in living stories of life, death, renewal, love, protection, battle, nurturance, scent, texture. What do you see, my boys? Who are we? What is all of this, and why? What is the Source, the Mystery, the Face? They don’t hesitate. They don’t ponder and articulate. There’s nothing to say. They only smile and run.
December 9 2023
My tracks in the mud will rise, covered by leaves, soaked with water, the imprinted earth will recover into smooth ground. No one will know I’ve been here. Seeds I plant will bud, grow, die, bud, grow, die, forever. No one will know I’ve been here. Love has been given to me, swirls around, goes out of me in a me form, into you, swirls in you making a you form, into another, forever. Light from the beginning or the end or underneath or around enters our atmosphere, hits my skin, warms me, some of it reflects off of my eyes, goes back out of the atmosphere into the beginning or the end or underneath or around, forever. No one will know I’ve been here. I heard words, received teachings, worked with my hands, have these two beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful boys who are not mine but are gifts, tell them words, teach them, watch them work with their hands, maybe have their own kids. Forever. No one will know I’ve been here. This is all such a joy.
December 8 2023
I made a coffee table for me and the boys. I moved into this apartment with them a little over a year ago, and it only took me that long to get a proper table for us. There's no sarcasm in that – a year isn't bad for a personal project that isn't pressing. Up until now we've been using a bench I made as a stand-in. It served us well. Now that bench is used for butts and not for books and bowls.
Started with a piece of walnut I’ve had for a few years, the end of a slab that was a drop, or a cut-off piece, from a previous project. I've always imagined I would use it for a coffee table, but you never know. The board was leaning against a wall thinking about what it wanted to be.
I didn't draw out any specs or have a design in mind. Instead I simply made moves as they felt right, a sort of woodworking jazz. Walnut sings as a material. It doesn't need any ornamentation. I prefer to integrate all of the checks and cracks as opposed to filling them with epoxy. One of the reason to either fill a crack or put an inlay in a crack is to prevent the board from cracking further over the years as the wood expands and contracts during seasonal changes. I'm ok with it cracking further, and I doubt that it will crack enough in my lifetime to lose structural integrity. It'll be fine.
After I made the cuts to the board the shape ended up looking like some kind of shield or amoeba. I knew I wanted to funk around with the base of the table – not too loud to where it drowns out the table top, and not too quiet to where it feels boring or nonexistent. There's no right or wrong move.
My neighbor across the alley was doing some home renovations and he removed some copper piping from his basement and asked if I could use it. This was, I don't know, last spring. Yes I will take all of your copper. Copper is a great material. Give it a hundred years outside and it will transition to a green color. Old urban church roofs were sometimes clad in copper, and because they get rained on they oxidize over time and turn green. It's amazing.
So I like copper. These legs won't turn green, but they have a great patina from being in a basement for probably 60 years. I didn't do anything to the legs except cut them to length and deburr the edges so they wouldn't catch on the rug. I made plugs from plywood and hammered them into the legs using only a friction fit. This will allow me to add furniture glides if I ever need to.
Before I made the holes for the legs I placed them in various orientations and numbers until I found a look and feel that resonated. Who know how all this works, or if it works. The freedom is part of the fun. I ended up using all 9 pieces. It doesn't feel too busy to me, but I did think during the process, "Well I'm not making the vacuuming process easy for myself." So it goes.
I used epoxy to set the legs into the bottom of the table top then touched up the lengths of the legs so that they are generally equal. Last move was to oil the top and let it cure. The process took me a day but also took me 6 years of doing this kind of work and acquiring tools and expanding my aesthetics, curiosities, and a sort of courage to be weird with it to be able to do it in a day. It feels freeing. Make a move, make another move, consider those moves, go backwards or forwards or sideways, turn it around, talk to it, send it to friends, tell it a story, listen, make more moves, see what happens.
That's one way to make a thing.
December 7 2023
The Return
Some day, if you are lucky,
you'll return from a thunderous journey
trailing snake scales, wing fragments
and the musk of Earth and moon.
Eyes will examine you for signs of damage,
or change and you, too, will wonder
if your skin shows traces of fur, or leaves
if thrushes have built a nest of your hair,
if Andromeda burns from your eyes.
Do not be surprised by prickly questions
from those who barely inhabit their own fleeting lives,
who barely taste their own possibility, who barely dream.
If your hands are empty, treasureless
if your toes have not grown claws,
if your obedient voice has not become a wild cry, a howl,
you will reassure them. We warned you, they might declare,
there is nothing else, no point, no meaning,
no mystery at all, just this frantic waiting to die.
And yet, they tremble, mute, afraid you've returned
without sweet elixir for unspeakable thirst, without a fluent dance
or holy language to teach them, without a compass
bearing to a forgotten border where no one crosses
without weeping for the terrible beauty of galaxies
and granite and bone.
They tremble, hoping your lips hold a secret,
that the song your body now sings will redeem them,
yet they fear your secret is dangerous, shattering,
and once it flies from your astonished mouth,
they-like you-must disintegrate
before unfolding tremulous wings.
- Geneen Marie Haugen
(My worst best friend Jeffrey sent me that.)
December 6 2023
“His father seemed to hear voices from far out in the night. He is described as a listener who encouraged. When William was nine or ten, his father, walking with him in his alert, bird-glimpsing way, remarked, ‘Now Billy, look carefully in these trees—you may be able to see the hawk better than I can.’ That's astonishing in this world where so many fathers compete with their sons: ‘Give me that wrench …you're ruining everything.’”
— Robert Bly writing about the poet William Stafford and Stafford’s relationship with his father (from the introduction to Stafford’s book of poetry “The Darkness Around Us is Deep”)
November 23 2023
Mythologically, historically, things fall apart for men at around 40. Could be 33 or 37 or 45. I don’t know when it is or if it is for women. Could it be that because women know what it means to bleed and to lose something of themselves from the time of puberty that they intrinsically know what death means in their bodies, over and over, rhythmically (the word -flow- here holds a poetic sense), and because of this knowing they don’t fall apart, a big death, like men do sometime near middle life?
This is a thinking that goes back to forever. Nothing is new except the shaping and molding of forms.
This falling apart for men needs a name. It needs to be named. It doesn't have a single name. I don't like "mid-life crisis"; it is a tame, domesticated. That won't do at all.
You have to listen for its name or name it yourself or give it a name others have given it before you. Let it go unnamed and it becomes far more dangerous. You can spot when a man has gone through a big death and not found its name. That man goes out and buys a car. That man dates someone and you think, “Dude. Come on.” That man gets a gym membership and tries to get his body to go back in time, become a boy again. He doesn't know he's still a boy. He could have saved so much money! (As I type the thought came to me "maybe I should get a gym membership".) Watch out for that man. Wish him well, hope for him, but stay out of his path. There is a trail of blood behind him and a trail of blood in front of him.
When you do not listen for the name of a big death then you are never able to sit in it and submit to it and let go of the control you thought you had. You will try to overpower it and you'll lose, but not by your own submission; it will slowly destroy you until your final breath.
Listen for the name and be crushed by it. Find out its name and discover that, while it is more powerful than you, it does not define you. It will not hold you down forever if you allow yourself to be held down now. The more you let go, the more it lets go, almost as if you are partnering with it, dancing with it, maybe even thankful for it.
The man who has submitted to that death – behind that man are footprints of ashes instead of blood. He accepted the poverty. Keep an eye on him and watch him fly. Nothing will stop him because he no longer needs to go anywhere. How can you be stopped if you do not need to move? He has everything he needs, wherever he is. When he does move it is in complete freedom. The ashes in his footprints nurture and rejuvenate the soil with every single step, depositing minerals back into the earth that would have otherwise taken decades to decay and decompose.
I know some of those men. They are amazing.
November 20 2023
No need to tell me about your successes. You’ll bring them up naturally, without knowing it. So will I. Do tell me about your disasters; those are always helpful. The ruined places are where we learn about each other. Tell me where you went down in flames, where you laid or are still lying in ashes. Now this is a dangerous telling, so be a good editor of your stories. Do not lie. People can smell the stench of falsehoods. Instead choose the truths to expose, and allow them to be spoken in time, sand falling in an hour glass. Break the glass and the sand buries the listener. Just let them fall as they fall and try trusting a bit, then a little more.